


Sink

by kalijean



Series: Arch to the Sky [26]
Category: due South
Genre: Arch to the Sky, M/M, Nipawin (1991-1995)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-13
Updated: 2011-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:03:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalijean/pseuds/kalijean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1993: In the absence of information, Turnbull thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sink

Turnbull brushed back and forth in the snow.

Something was wrong. He sensed it on a level he couldn't name, some deep sense of _wrongness_ for which he had no true evidence. It niggled at him. Ate away.

Every time he asked, Mark's answer was even more emphatically 'no'. More annoyed, too. Turnbull dreaded the annoyance. Nothing made him feel quite so useless as that tone.

The sound of it ached. Something sharp and dull at the same time, like using hands overworked from repetitive motion. Itchy. Sore. Oversensitive, and yet he still had to use them. He still had to ask, and work the surface more raw with every answer.

He felt it bodily, too. Turnbull never knew why it was like that for him; emotional wrings felt so much on the surface, like he'd fallen on the ice and tumbled onto his back. Bruised. Aching muscles. So much so that he didn't feel like curling. He'd rather be anywhere else. Someone would probably figure out he was missing soon. Come to get him.

Or maybe someone would just want the broom he was using.

He'd made a perfect square in the snow, ground underneath about as battered and frozen out as Turnbull felt.

He had to have done something. Or failed to do something. Perhaps his perceptions were failing him; perhaps there was something Mark needed that Turnbull couldn't see. Perhaps Mark didn't even know he needed it. Turnbull had never been good with words when it came to feelings; maybe Mark needed to hear more from him? Maybe he'd heard too much. Perhaps Turnbull was so bad at talking that Mark had grown tired of it.

That would explain the impatience. The distance. Perhaps. Perhaps Mark was just tired of listening to him scramble for words.

Mark was inside. His mind on the game, of course. Turnbull's wouldn't be until he could figure out what it was he was doing _wrong_.

What kind of awful power had he handed this man that just the ghost of a feeling could knock out Turnbull's ability to _curl?_

Part of him wished there was some way to take it all back. Steal back that piece of him he'd handed this man and save himself from ever having ruined things in the first place. It was done. He couldn't. Wouldn't, either; he wasn't a coward, and for that matter, he didn't want to think of what he would be if he'd never known the man. He didn't want to lose what it was they had, damaged though it appeared to be.

Turnbull couldn't understand why Mark just wouldn't acknowledge it.

He picked up the brush and slung it, sinking it into a snowbank. The handle stuck out.

It didn't help.

He glanced back toward the building, making sure he wouldn't be seen, and then got up to walk away.


End file.
